Real name: Николай Петрович Раков (Nikolaj Petrovič Rakow)

Effective period / Period of releases: 1949 - 1995

Nikolai Rakov (1908–1990) was a Soviet composer, pianist, conductor and music educator, laureate of the Stalin Prize (1946) and People's Artist of the USSR (1989). He studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory with Reinhold Glière. After graduating in 1931, Nikolai started working as a lecturer in the following year and became a Professor in 1943. Some of his students included Edison Denisov, Boris Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Peiko, Andrei Eshpai, and Alfred Schnittke.